11.06.2018 - 03.09.2018
For a certain Western, white, and bourgeois elite, the year 1968 is often recalled in relation to the month of May, following the famous Californian Summer of Love of 1967: an emblem of the social, moral, and consumer emancipation of a certain youth. However, in 1968 this side of the Atlantic was also the site of a series of events linked to other struggles for liberty and social demands that were exacerbated in the second half of the twentieth century: the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, protests against the War in Vietnam, the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico, the first papal visit to Latin America in Colombia, the Noche de los Bastones Largos (Night of the Long Staffs) in Argentina, the riots in Rio de Janeiro, and the skirmishes in Peru.
Although students were placed at the head of a romanticized struggle to escape oppressive authority—to be able to kiss freely in the streets with the conviction of a better and more egalitarian world, circumstances always outdid them. In Latin America, youth, without realizing that their dreams of emancipation came with a helping of Coca-Cola ads and Disney films, struggled to free their bodies from religious and conservative societies, the same regimes that would transmute from dictatorships formed by Yankee imperialism to Neoliberal regimes. Throughout the struggle, the contradictions between the libertarian thought of José Martí, the legacy of Simón Bolivar, and the post-Marxist philosophies that were nourished by the multiplicity of class, race, and identity within the region faded. If in Europe these two paradoxical roles were able to coincide, it is thanks to the economic prosperity left behind by a certain moderate Left that granted a few last social privileges before the beginning of the bestial neoliberalism of the eighties. In Latin America, this political dialogue failed almost immediately due to revolutionary idealism and the unsurpassed brutality of a colonial condition thus far.
As such, 1968 came to be the year in which the schism inherent to the postmodern human condition became more acute. Namely, the split between liberal egoism exacerbated by a consumerist society and the dreams of collective emancipation born from the wave of independence. What mechanisms of struggle, optimism, and collaboration can be revealed when confronted with a conservatism that renews itself so as to not relinquish its power? How can we articulate the aperture aroused from consciences and crosscuts in the years leading up to ’68? How to resuscitate the optimism of youth in our activism towards the notion that there is a future? In this issue of Terremoto, we will use the fiftieth anniversary of the year 1968 as a starting point for a reflection on the notion of independence and freedom through various contributions regarding the autonomy of bodies, sexualities, and thoughts, as well as of small towns, ecosystems, and dogmas—whether authoritarian or emancipatory. We will follow artists and researchers into the insatiable search for this impossible autonomy, and, together, we will clash our chains in a vicious celebratory dance in the face of fraternity and alienation.
12
2018
Javier Barrios, "Moshpit guerrilla I", 2018. Colored pencil on paper. Image courtesy of the artist. Work commissioned by Terremoto.
12 2018
11.06.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Felipe Osornio Lechedevirgen Trimegisto, Lukas Avendaño
A collaboration between the artists Lukas Avendaño and Felipe Osornio who visually unfold poetry and prose to question the subversive body.
12 2018
18.06.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Fernanda Nogueira, Pêdra Costa
Pêdra Costa and Fernanda Nogueira make a genealogy of the post-pornographic and sexually dissident practices that have resisted the alienation of the colonial project in Brazil.
12 2018
25.06.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Jesús Torrivilla
Curator Jesús Torrivilla makes a genealogy of those conceptualist works that during the sixties and seventies in Venezuela were belittled by the modern canons, works that allow us to understand the current contemporary practices of the Venezuelan diaspora.
12 2018
02.07.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Giscard Bouchotte
Haitian curator Giscard Bouchotte questions the ideal of freedom inherited from the Haitian Revolution through the work of Ishola Akpo, Josué Azor, Maksaens Denis, and Nicola Lo Calzo.
12 2018
09.07.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Ren (Rachel) Ellis Neyra
From tracing the importance of political affection in Latinx’s Trap as song of survival, poetic theorist Ren (Rachel) Ellis Neyra presents two poems about the fugitivity of the migrant body.
12 2018
16.07.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Nosotras Proponemos
Given the widespread warning that has circulated intermittently to make visible the machismo and sexism that conditions power relations in the art world, We Propose—Assembly of women artists, curators, researchers, writers, gallerists, art workers—elaborated a Commitment to feminist practices. From Terremoto we join the dissemination of this Commitment in a poster format—in our printed version—encouraging our readers to participate in the free circulation of the Commitment by reviewing it with attention and awareness in relation to individual and collective practice.
12 2018
23.07.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Garrillas/Complicidades des.esperadas
The collective GARRILLAS / desperate.awaited complicities from their experience in the First International Gathering of Politics, Art, Sport, and Culture for Women in Strive question the use and action of spaces from urban individuality in contrast to the collective proposal of Zapatista women.
12 2018
30.07.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Alexia Tala
Curator Alexia Tala gives a brief recap of the history of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, one of the most important symbols of resistance in Latin America.
12 2018
06.08.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Sylvère Lotringer
Philosopher Sylvère Lotringer, placing us in the post-Fordist era of immaterial work and in relation to the Italian labor movement Autonomía Operaia, contrasts Paolo Virno’s idea of the “multitude” with that approached by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in «Empire».
12 2018
13.08.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Ariadna Ramonetti, Fernando García-Dory, Mauricio Corbalan, Alejandro Alonso
Fernando García Dory talks with Ariadna Ramonetti, Mauricio Corbalán and Alex Alonso, about the importance of rethinking artistic practices and contemporary cultural production as a necessary action of resistance against the dispossession and excessive violation of the territory.
12 2018
20.08.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Paula Fleisner
Philosopher Paula Fleisner reviews the work of Claudia Fontes which was part of the 57th Venice Art Biennial to question the anthropocentrism and capitalist speciesism with which the Argentine identity has been built.
12 2018
27.08.2018
Issue 12: Independences
Carolina Caycedo, Catalina Lozano
Carolina Caycedo and Catalina Lozano reflect on healing and decolonization processes as possible solutions to the dominant authoritarian charm.
